Art in England

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[14] The remark has reference to certain odes by Cumberland in honour of
Romney, and to Johnson's comment thereupon:--'Why, sir, they would have
been thought as good as odes commonly are if Cumberland had not put his
name to them; but a name immediately draws censure, unless it be a name
that bears down everything before it. Nay, Cumberland has made his odes
subsidiary to the fame of another man. They might have run well enough
by themselves; but he has not only loaded them with a name--he has made
them carry double.'

That fortune is inconstant and that reputation is a bubble, it was
hardly necessary for Mr. Croker to assure us. Unquestionably the fame of
the painter, as of other people, undergoes vicissitudes: varies very
much accordingly as it is appraised by contemporaries or posterity. But
it may be open to doubt whether the editor of Boswell does not
undervalue the artists specified in illustration of his proposition:
more especially Romney. That any benefit has accrued to Romney's fame
from the unsafe sort of embalmment it has received in the rhymes of such
poetasters as Hayley and Cumberland cannot be contended. Even Pope's
verse, though it has saved a name from oblivion, has failed to redeem it
from contempt. The great poet condescended to sing the praises of
Jervas, the pupil of Kneller; but the renown of the painter, Pope's
praises notwithstanding, was fleeting enough. We read of Miss Reynolds
marvelling at the complete disappearance of Jervas's pictures. 'My
dear,' said Sir Joshua, in explanation, 'they are all up in the garrets
now.' For just as humble guests resign their places, content with very
inferior accommodation, when more distinguished visitors arrive upon the
scene, so bad pictures yield to better works of art, and quit the walls
of galleries and saloons to take refuge in servants' bedrooms, back
attics, and stable lofts; suffering much neglect and contumely in
comparison with their former high estate and fortune.

If we may assume that Romney's pictures are now but lightly valued, it
must be conceded that the time has been when they were very differently
estimated. For in his day Romney was the admitted rival of Reynolds,
whose pupil and biographer Northcote, an unwilling witness, admitting
with reluctance anything to his preceptor's disadvantage, says,
expressly:--'Certain it is that Sir Joshua was not much employed in
portraits after Romney grew in fashion.' Reynolds, it cannot be doubted,
was jealous of Romney, and spoke of him always rather acridly as 'the
man in Cavendish Square;' just as Barry was at one time fond of
designating Reynolds 'the man in Leicester Fields.' 'There are two
factions in art,' said Lord Chancellor Thurlow; 'Romney and Reynolds
divide the town; and I am of the Romney faction.' In his own day,
indeed, the recognition of the artist was remarkable. Flaxman, the
sculptor, maintained him to be 'the first of all our painters for poetic
dignity of conception.' 'Between ourselves,' wrote Hayley to Romney's
son, 'I think your father as much superior to Reynolds in _genius_ as he
was inferior in _worldly wisdom_.' Upon his death three biographies of
Romney were given to the world. Cumberland wrote a brief but able
memoir. Hayley produced an elaborate life, embellished with engravings
and epistles in verse. And the Reverend John Romney published an
interesting, if not an impartial, account of his father's career. Yet
these works have not prevented the painter's name from gradually losing
its hold upon the public memory, nor his pictures from sinking far
beneath the valuation originally set upon them. Accident, and the want
of a permanent public gallery in which the best achievements of English
painters may be stored and studied and admired by their countrymen,
have contributed to these results. Upon the great occasions when English
pictures have been assembled for exhibition, somehow Romney has been but
inadequately represented. In the Fine Art Gallery of the Great
Exhibition of 1862 there was but one portrait by Romney to thirty-four
examples of Reynolds. In the finer and more complete collection at
Manchester, in 1857, there were five Romneys to thirty-eight pictures by
Reynolds. Altogether Sir Joshua's memory has been amply avenged for any
neglect he endured in his lifetime by reason of the undue ascendancy of
Romney.

George Romney was born at Beckside, near Dalton, Lancashire, on the 15th
December 1734, the son of John Romney, a carpenter and cabinet-maker,
who, above his station in taste and knowledge, is alleged to have
introduced into the county various improvements in agricultural
engineering. Of his union with Ann Simpson, the daughter of a Cumberland
yeoman, four sons were born:--William, who died on the eve of his
departure to the West Indies, in the employ of a merchant there; James,
who rose to the rank of a lieutenant-colonel in the service of the East
India Company; Peter, who gave promise of considerable art-talent, but
died in his thirty-fourth year; and George, the painter, under mention.

Of a sedate and steady disposition, but somewhat dull and 'backward' at
his books, George Romney, in his eleventh year, was taken from school,
and, until he arrived at twenty-one, was employed in his father's
workshop. The lad had manifested skill as a carver in wood; had
constructed a violin for himself, and read with deep interest Da Vinci's
_Treatise on Painting_, making copies of the engravings. His natural
talent soon further developed itself. His father had a business
acquaintance with one Mr. Alderman Redman, of Kendal, upholsterer. The
Alderman's sister, a Mrs. Gardner, chanced to see some of young Romney's
drawings, was struck with their cleverness, and encouraged him to
persevere, and to make his first essay in portraiture by taking her
likeness. The boy produced a drawing that was much extolled; further
evidences of his enthusiasm for art were forthcoming; and eventually
John Romney was induced to take his son to Kendal, and apprentice him to
an itinerant painter named Christopher Steele, a showy gentleman, who
had been in Paris, aped French manners, wore fantastic clothes, and was
popularly known as _Count_ Steele--a sort of art-Dulcamara, in fact.
Articles of apprenticeship were duly signed, sealed, and delivered
between John Romney, cabinet-maker, and George his son, of the one part,
and Christopher Steele, painter, of the other part. George Romney was
bound for the term of four years, to serve his master faithfully and
diligently, to obey his reasonable commands, and keep his secrets; John
Romney was to provide his son with 'suitable and necessary clothes, both
linen and woollen;' and Christopher Steele, in consideration of
twenty-one pounds, covenanted to instruct his apprentice in the art or
science of a painter, and to find him meat, drink, washing, and lodging
during the said term. Steele was no great artist, though he had studied
under Carlo Vanloo, of Paris. He troubled himself little enough as to
his pupil's progress, employing him for the most part in grinding
colours and in the drudgery of the studio. But George Romney made the
best of his opportunities. And he was not unhappy. He had fallen in love
with Mary Abbott, one of two sisters living with their widowed mother,
in humble circumstances, at Kendal. But soon Steele was bent on quitting
Kendal, had made up his mind to move to York, and directed his pupil to
prepare to accompany him forthwith. The lovers, of course, were in
despair at the thought of their approaching separation. In the end they
secured their mutual fidelity by a hasty and private marriage. Reproved
for his precipitancy and imprudence, Romney replied that his marriage
would surely act as a spur to his application: 'My thoughts being now
still and not obstructed by youthful follies, I can practise with more
diligence and success than ever.' While at York he zealously devoted
himself to his art. His wife, left at Kendal, assisted him with such
small sums as she could spare, sending him half a guinea at a time,
hidden under the seal of a letter; in return he forwarded to her his own
portrait, his first work in oil.

After staying nearly a year in York, Steele and his apprentice moved to
Lancaster. Meeting with little encouragement there, Steele, always
restless and embarrassed, determined to try his fortune in Ireland. The
pupil was now very anxious to be quit of his preceptor; he longed to be
practising on his own account. He had at different times lent Steele
small sums of money, amounting altogether to ten pounds. He now proposed
that both debt and articles of apprenticeship should be cancelled--that
the release of the debtor should be the consideration for the freedom of
the apprentice. Steele consented, and George Romney became his own
master.

His prices until he went to London were certainly not high: two guineas
for a three-quarter portrait and six for a whole figure on a kit-cat
canvas. The only way of making this poor tariff remunerative was by
extreme rapidity of execution; and few men have ever painted so rapidly
as Romney. But this rapid manner has its disadvantages. If habitually
persisted in, it in time renders thorough finish impossible to the
painter. An absolute necessity in Romney's early life, it became a
distinct vice in his after works. To this were in part attributable the
crowd of incomplete canvases the painter left behind him at his death,
and the characteristic sketchiness traceable even in his most esteemed
pictures.

At York he disposed of twenty pictures by a lottery, which produced
little more than forty pounds. Among these works was a scene from
_Tristram Shandy_, upon which he had bestowed some pains; for at York
Romney had attracted the notice of Laurence Sterne (whose portrait
Steele had painted), and received at his hands marks of attention and
friendship.

Twenty-seven years old, Romney began to weary of provincial
triumphs,--to long for the wider field of exertion and the more
enlightened recognition he could only find in the capital. He had toiled
early and late to acquire money and skill sufficient for a creditable
appearance in town. A son and daughter had been born of his marriage,
yet his domestic ties could not bind him to the north, while his
ambition was prompting him so urgently to seek certain fame and fortune
in the south. He managed to raise a sum of one hundred pounds. Taking
fifty for his travelling expenses, he left the balance for the support
of his wife and children, and without a single letter of recommendation
or introduction, set forth to try his chances alone in London. He was
soon obliged to send for twenty pounds more, of the fifty he had left
with his wife. He started southward on the 14th of March 1762, in
company with two other Kendal gentlemen, on horseback. He stayed a day
at Manchester, where he met his old master Count Steele, who warmly
greeted his pupil, and rode with the party next day as far as Stockport.
After much alarm from highwaymen--for in those days country banks were
not, and every traveller was his own purse-bearer--Mr. Romney and his
friends arrived safely at the Castle Inn, London, on the 21st March. The
painter remained at the inn for a fortnight, until he was able to settle
down comfortably in lodgings, in Dove Court, Mansion House. He was soon
hard at work upon 'The Death of Rizzio,' adorning his walls with
pictures he had brought with him or sent for afterwards from Kendal,
such as 'King Lear,' 'Elfrida,' 'The Death of Lefevre,' and a few
portraits of friends. The Rizzio picture has been represented as 'a work
of extraordinary merit, combining energetic action with strong
expression.' Its fate was sad enough; attracting no notice, producing no
profit, and at length becoming an incumbrance in the studio, the painter
destroyed it with his own hands; or, more probably, cut it up and sold
it piecemeal, for one of his biographers mentions having seen certain
heads by Romney in which terror was strongly depicted, and which had
evidently formed portions of some larger work. In the August following
his arrival in town he quitted Dove Court for Bearbinder's Lane. Here he
executed several portraits at three guineas each, and painted his 'Death
of Wolfe,' to which was awarded a prize of fifty guineas by the Society
of Arts. Out of this picture arose much controversy. Adverse critics
objected that the work could not with propriety be regarded as an
historical composition, because, in point of fact, no historian had yet
recorded the event it pretended to represent; Wolfe's death, however
glorious and memorable, was too recent to be within the legitimate scope
of high art! Further, Mr. Romney's work was condemned as 'a mere coat
and waistcoat picture,' and much fault was found with his accurate
rendering of the regimentals of the officers and soldiers and the silk
stockings of the general. A few years later Benjamin West was greatly
praised for his treatment of the same subject; Reynolds, after much
deliberation and the statement, in the first instance, of a directly
contrary opinion, avowing that the young American's picture would
occasion 'a complete revolution in art.' It had been the plan,
theretofore, in pictures of historical events of whatever period, to
portray the characters engaged in the garb (or no garb) of antiquity;
but West had declined, in placing upon his canvas an event of the year
1759, to introduce the costume of classic times; altogether disregarding
the dislike of the connoisseurs to cocked hats, cross-belts,
laced-coats, and bayonets, and their demands for bows and arrows,
helmets, bucklers, and nakedness. But, in truth, West was merely
following in the footsteps of George Romney, who had already produced a
'Death of Wolfe' in the correct dress of the period. There were few to
laud poor Romney, however. Even the decision which gave him the prize
was reversed, and the premium ultimately awarded to Mortimer, who had
exhibited at the same time a picture of 'Edward the Confessor seizing
the Treasurer of his mother.' Romney was obliged to be content with a
gratuity of twenty-five guineas.

The painter's friends at once charged Reynolds with an active share in
effecting this result; and indeed it seems clear that the reversal of
the decision was due to his interference. They averred that he was
anything but an impartial judge; that he was well aware the 'Death of
Wolfe' was the work of a portrait painter; that he could not bear the
thought of a rival near his throne, and had laid down the principle
'that it was impossible for two painters in the same department of the
art to be long in friendship with each other.' He would not permit an
obscure painter from the country to carry off a prize from a student of
Mortimer's pretensions. With Mortimer he was on terms of friendship: his
fellow-pupil under Hudson, and, above all, no portrait painter. What
measure of truth there may have been in these allegations it is now
difficult to decide. Thenceforward Reynolds and Romney were certainly
enemies. Between the two painters, indeed, there never existed the
slightest intercourse of any kind.

The curious treatment he had received from the Society of Arts made much
stir, however, and brought the young painter friends and patrons.
Probably the next best thing to securing the friendship of the future
President of the Academy was the reputation of having incurred his
enmity. 'The Death of Wolfe' was purchased by Mr. Rowland Stephenson,
the banker, who presented it to Governor Varelst, by whom it was placed
in the Council-Chamber at Calcutta. Romney moved from the city to the
Mews-gate, Charing Cross, probably to be nearer the exhibition in Spring
Gardens, and the Artists' Academy in St. Martin's Lane. At this time, it
may be noted, Dance and Mortimer were living in Covent Garden, while
Hogarth and Reynolds had set up their easels in Leicester Fields. Romney
now raised his prices for portraits to five guineas, and saved money
sufficient to enable him to pay a long-dreamt-of visit to Paris. He was
absent six weeks; and on his return took chambers in Gray's Inn, where
he painted several portraits of Members of the legal profession,
including Sir Joseph Yates, one of the judges of the Court of the King's
Bench. In Gray's Inn, too, he painted his picture of the 'Death of King
Edmund,' which, in 1765, obtained a prize of fifty guineas from the
Society of Arts. For this work, however, he was unable to find a
purchaser. In 1767 his circumstances had so far improved that he felt
himself justified in moving to a house in Great Newport Street, within a
few doors of Reynolds, where he remained until his visit to Italy, in
1773. Meanwhile his friends were loud in their laudation of the prodigy
who, in historical works, they declared, promised to rival the great
masters, and in portraiture threatened to wrest the palm from Reynolds
himself. He now raised his prices again, charging twelve guineas for a
three-quarter portrait, and found no lack of sitters at the increased
rate. Whether or not he sought for academic honours is not clear;
certain it is they were not conferred upon him: and he invariably chose
to send his pictures to the rooms of the Chartered Society, in Spring
Gardens, rather than to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy. Artists,
in every way his inferiors, were welcomed to the ranks of 'the forty;'
but to Romney never were granted even the poorer dignities of
associateship. This neglect of him he always ascribed to the sinister
influence of Reynolds and his followers, among whom, in this instance,
must be numbered Fuseli, who was much given to sneering at Romney as 'a
coat and waistcoat painter,' and who, in his edition of _Pilkington_,
says, pertly, 'Romney was made for his times, and his times for him.'
Allan Cunningham suggests, what is probably true, that Romney was a man
likely to take a sort of morbid pleasure in his isolation, and in the
odium which would necessarily devolve upon the Academy by its neglect of
an artist of his eminence. His name has gone to swell the list of
painters of mark who have ventured to defy the influence and opposition
of the Academy, and have single-handed fought their way to success
notwithstanding.

In 1771, through the introduction of Cumberland, Mrs. Yates, the
actress, sat to Romney for a picture of the 'Tragic Muse.' Of course,
this work was completely eclipsed by Reynolds's 'Tragic Muse,' painted
some thirteen years later. Notwithstanding the demerits of the
President's picture, the plagiarism of the pose and draperies from
Michael Angelo's Joel in the Capella Sistina, the incongruities of the
theatrical state-chair in the clouds, the gold lace, plaited hair,
imperial tiara and strings of pearls,--still the majestic beauty of his
model, her classical features, broad brow, grand form and superb eyes,
enabled him to surpass immeasurably the effort of his younger and less
favoured rival. Mrs. Yates, though an accomplished actress, was far from
possessing the personal gifts of the Kembles' sister. To Romney's studio
Cumberland also brought Garrick, with some hope that the great actor
might interest himself in favour of the painter. But Garrick was too
closely allied with Sir Joshua; he was wilfully blinded to the merits of
Romney. He criticised with most impertinent candour the works he found
in the studio, pausing before a large family group of portraits and with
an affected imitation of the attitude of the chief figure, saying, 'Upon
my word, Mr. Romney, this is a very regular, well-ordered family; and
this is a very bright-rubbed mahogany table, at which that motherly,
good lady is sitting; and this worthy good gentleman in the scarlet
waistcoat is doubtless a very excellent subject--to the state, I mean
(if all these are his children)--but not for your art, Mr. Romney, if
you mean to pursue it with that success which I hope will attend you!'
His 'pasteboard Majesty of Drury Lane,' in truth, knew nothing of the
painter's art; and from any other than Romney would have incurred, as he
well merited, most unceremonious ejection from the studio. He was safe
enough with Romney, however, as he probably well knew. The painter,
deeply mortified, silently turned the family picture with its face to
the wall. He was extremely sensitive: a curious diffidence mingled with
his conviction of his own cleverness. He was readily disconcerted: at a
laugh, a jest, a few words of satiric criticism, he lost faith in
himself, interest in his works; the subject which had promised so much
pleasure now seemed to him fruitful only in pain and disappointment; he
would seek at once a new occupation, and add another to a growing pile
of canvases which the ridicule and captiousness of others, and his own
weakness and caprice, had combined to leave for ever incomplete. Perhaps
it was by way of balm for the wound he had unwittingly inflicted, by
bringing Garrick to the studio, that Cumberland published in the Public
Advertiser his verses upon the painters of the day, with especial
mention of Romney and his picture of 'Contemplation,' which work, the
poet says in a note, 'the few who attended the unfashionable exhibition
in Spring Gardens may possibly recollect.' Already the success of the
Royal Academy was telling disastrously upon the 'Society of Artists of
Great Britain' to which Romney had attached himself.

In 1773, our painter, in his thirty-ninth year, and in receipt of an
income of some twelve hundred pounds, derived solely from his
profession, set sail for Italy, bearing with him letters of introduction
from the Dukes of Gloucester and Richmond to the Pope, and accompanied
by his close friend, Humphrey, the miniature-painter. His Holiness gave
gracious permission to the artist to erect scaffolds in the Vatican, the
better to make copies of the Raphaels which decorate the palace.

Among the pictures executed during Romney's Italian tour was a portrait
of the eccentric Wortley Montagu (Lady Mary's son), who had assumed the
manners and attire of a Turk, and who, shortly after his sitting to the
painter, died from a bone sticking in his throat. Another work which he
brought back with him to England was a daring attempt to represent
'Providence brooding over chaos.' In later years, when Lord George
Gordon and his mob were sacking the Roman Catholic chapels throughout
London, and plundering the houses of all suspected of sympathy with the
Latin Church, Romney became alarmed lest his picture should attract the
attention of the rioters, and, regarded by them as an evidence of
idolatrous devotion, lead to the destruction of his house and property.
The canvas was at once removed out of sight. At the sale of his works,
on the death of the painter, his son changed the name of the picture to
'Jupiter Pluvius,' under which more marketable guise it soon found a
purchaser.

On the 7th of June 1775, Romney arrived again in England: his return
being celebrated by glowing strains from Cumberland's ready muse. As
Gibbon said of the poetic praises of the painter's friends--'If they did
not contribute much to his professional prosperity, they might be justly
called an elegant advertisement of his merit.' Sitters of all ranks now
crowded to his studio. If his absence from England had done nothing else
for him, it had wonderfully enhanced his reputation. But persons of
taste and quality were of opinion that his visit to Italy had wrought
marvels. They pretended to see a striking improvement, not merely in the
mechanical, but also in the mental part of his work; his conceptive
powers were found to be strengthened and enriched, and his method of
painting benefited beyond measure by his Italian studies; he was no
longer cold, and harsh, and heavy; all was now warmth and light,
tenderness and beauty. It was at this time that Reynolds began to speak
of Romney as 'the man in Cavendish Square.' He had established himself
in the spacious mansion which the death of Cotes, the Royal Academician,
had left vacant, and which, it may be noted, after the expiry of
Romney's tenancy, was occupied by Sir Martin Archer Shee. Not without
considerable anxiety, however, did Romney enter upon possession of his
new abode. He was seized with an irrepressible misgiving that he was
embarking upon a career of far greater expense than his success had
warranted, or than the emoluments of his profession would enable him to
maintain. 'In his singular constitution,' his biographer Hayley here
finds occasion to observe, 'there was so much nervous timidity united to
great bodily strength and to enterprising and indefatigable ambition,
that he used to tremble, when he walked every morning in his new
habitation, with a painful apprehension of not finding business
sufficient to support him. These fears were only early flutterings of
that hypochondriacal disorder which preyed in secret on his comfort
during many years, and which, though apparently subdued by the cheering
exhortations of frendship and great professional prosperity, failed not
to show itself more formidably when he was exhausted by labour in the
decline of life.' His trepidation was quite groundless, however. He had
no lack of patrons or employment; the Duke of Richmond gave him generous
encouragement and support, sat for his own picture, in profile, and
commissioned portraits of Admiral Keppel, Mr. Burke, the Honourable Mrs.
Damer, Lord John Cavendish, Lord George Lennox, and others. The
painter's income soon sprung up to between three and four thousand a
year, produced by portraits only. In 1776 he was seriously ill from a
violent cold caught by standing in the rain, amongst the crowd outside
Drury Lane Theatre, waiting to witness Garrick's farewell performance.
He was cured, however, by Sir Richard Jebb, the eminent physician, who
prescribed a bottle of Madeira to his patient, and attended him from
that time forward in every illness, but generously declined to accept a
fee for his services.

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